I am also just a couple years short of the half-century mark. You are correct, I am not the man I was fifteen or twenty years ago.

But I think you miss my point. What good are fast reflexes and the exuberance of youth on a ten year mission to explore the Jupiter system? Most of the time would be spent waiting to arrive, and then manning consoles to run experiments. Nothing that requires super fast reflexes or the ability to stay awake for days at a time. It's also a good bet that radiation exposure would probably kill anyone attempting such a mission. Even if we make it clear that this would be a one-way trip, you'd have people lining up to make the journey. Again, I ask you -- "why waste all that potential?"

Construction, management and operation of a moon base would be another mission that would be ideally suited to older folks. Most of their time would be spent planning and managing, with power equipment doing all the heavy construction. No wunderkind required.

If we want to, say, explore Mars with a team of ten or so, or set up a colony, that would be the time for the youngsters, IMHO.

There most certainly are plenty of healthy people who could go. However, I disagree that younger people could perform better than older people. Okay, the terminally ill would be a poor choice.

In a low (1/6G on the moon, for example), older folks would be just as capable as younger ones to perform low G construction, scientific testing, spaceport management, all kinds of stuff. In fact, many of the jobs necessary in low gravity/free fall would be just fine for those in their late fifties and sixties.

In fact, they would be a wonderful resource for long-term missions to the outer planets as well as helping to engineer space habitats, moon facilities and even martian exploration.

As long as the worker is healthy enough to survive the trip to LEO, they should be perfectly able to perform tasks for which they are trained (how many engineers, scientists and the myriad of other specialties required for space exploration, development and colonization are in that age range? A whole lot). Unless, of course, you think that somehow being older makes you less intellectually capable. The average lifespan of an American is somewhere around 75 years. I ask again, why waste a valuable resource?

What is more, this would obviate many of the evolutionary and ethical issues seen with younger participants.

Surely, given the activity level of many seniors, they could take on the really dangerous missions. Same goes for terminally ill people. If they're more concerned with science and discovery than with coming home, we'd all be better off. I'd guess that there are many seniors/terminally ill folks who be willing to take on a dangerous mission with little or no chance of returning. I'm not either of those and I would jump at such a chance. Why should we waste all that human potential?

Just sayin'.

There. FTFY.

There. FTFY.

As this clearly shows. Sad, but true.

An old boss of mine used to say (and he said it at least six times a day -- it was very annoying) that "when the pain to change is less than the pain to stay the same, people change."

Let's review. The pain caused by a redesigned site with less functionality and more broken functionality is much greater than the pain to use the existing site. So don't wonder why you're seeing so much pushback.

I strongly recommend that the dev team re-label Slasdot Beta as Slashdot Alpha rev 0.3 or something similar. Don't call it beta until the important features are complete. In case you're wondering what those features might be, they are smooth and complete support for comments and moderation. Usability is key and based on the testing that's been going on, clearly that's an issue with the new design.

Please take the hint. I like /. and would like to continue using it. But if you make the pain to change greater than finding somewhere else to go, I'm outa here.

As an aside, many of your users could do a much better job in less time than the folks you've got working on this. That should scare you. Something about altslashdot.org, I think.

Hey, how about posting an article with some statistical analysis of the feedback you've been getting? If it shows up on the front page, maybe you might get the right idea. Because AFAICT, management isn't getting it.

No. Johnny Gilbert is in Jeopardy. Don Pardo is in "The Illinois Enema Bandit."

And you're welcome.

As a smart (and very modest) person, the anti-intellectual bent of the average American is pretty obvious. They're not bad people, they've just been poorly educated and feel threatened. It's rather sad, really.

Thank you. The guy is fairly smart and seems to have a broad base of trivia knowledge. Were I to be a contestant, I'd use a similar strategy.

It's Sony/Jeopardy's goal to make money entertaining the masses. Mr. Chu's goal is to win games. Seems reasonable to me.

This is correct. The way the CC companies operate these is to get average credit scores for specific areas (zip codes, generally) or for people in specific groups. Fairly sophisticated statistical analyses (based on demographic profiles) are used to determine what offers are appropriate.

An excellent point. Thank you for correcting me. Civil action is appropriate in these situations. Unfortunately, content owners have co-opted our system to benefit themselves at the expense of the rest of us -- hence the criminalization of copyright infringement